Tuesday, September 16, 2014

The Beheading

Beheading, has been an old and primitive form
of public execution to reinforce the “Who is your daddy sentiment” in the
targeted audience. And as the current rock stars of the Islamic gun revolution
plan to take us back to the camel riding days of the Muhammad (PBuH). We are
seeing an increasing number of these incidents. But as long as these don’t
happen in our vicinity we ignore it like the Ebola virus until it came knocking to
our international airports.

I am sharing some snippets from the last few
pages of the Journal of Mr. Steven Sotloff a half Jewish American freelance
reporter, who was recently brutally executed in the deserts of Iraq by ISIS
after one year of captivity. The act was duly recorded and circulated in the
media and even the perpetrators were surprised by the speed of the media and
internet nowadays. The publicity their stunt had garnered even overshadowed the
Jennifer Lawrence iCloud leak.

This journal was found on the person of Indian
origin (Dongri, Mumbai) Irrfan, who had
specially gone to Iraq to join the Jihad against America on the call from ISIS.
Irrfan was a school dropout. He had then joined the local Madrassa to
learn farsi and Persian so that he could
understand what he spoke 5 times a day during namaaz, but all the efforts of Qazi were futile , as Irrfan,
except checking out his daughter did nothing worthwhile and finally was
expelled from the there too. His father late Shahnawaz was by no account a
religion fanatic. He considered this religion fanaticism nothing more than time
waste, but he died too soon to drill the same values in Irrfan. Unfortunately
his mother was not cut from the same cloth as his father. She had lost her
cousin in the 1993 riots in Mumbai and from that time nursed a grudge against
Hindus. Even though majority of the clients for her ladies boutique were fat
upper middle class Gujrati ladies, then logic was not a strong forte of
Viqrunissa Begum. And she was very proud of her name though she never bothered
about the meaning.

Not much is known about the indoctrination of Irrfan.
How a school dropout had got such courage to join the most organized covet
terrorist organization is something that is keeping the NSA(National Security
Adviser) and HM(Home minister) up at
nights. Irfan has been kept in the super-secret interrogation center, which is
the Indian Parliament. I am not talking about the floor of the house where ding
dong battles are staged between old and obese politicians, but the torture room
many floors below that. All the high value targets are placed there cut off
from the world. Even the interrogators
are housed there till the time target breaks. These measures are very
necessary. A stint down the dungeons can be very demanding even for the intelligence
sleuths as except the NSA no one has the access to them, not even their family.
So, normally young bachelor recruits are given the job to break the subject.

Not many
people knew that the terrorist attack on the Parliament a decade ago had twin
objectives of holding the bleeding Indian democracy at ransom and other to get
their brothers freed from the hell below. Only terrorist and Intelligence
officers know about the underground hell under the heart of the Indian
democracy.

Last few pages from the Journal of the beheaded
journalist Steven:

Sometimes I am so
lost in my thoughts that I forget I am in chains and have been in the same
condition for the last 355 days and 16 hours. My wrists and ankles have turned
into a very different shade than the rest of the skin due to the constant
shackling. For first couple of the months, it was green, then blue and now the
color is same as the rusted cuffs. These chains now feel like a part of my
body, like some appendage. Slowly and steadily my urge to stand up and move has
got subdued. I think this is what Darwin would have called evolution. Albeit, a
negative one. I have lost about 40 pounds, thanks to the diet I get here, the
cheapest way to get rid of the flab with no exercise; I have to hold onto my
pants while standing up.

The best part of the day is when I am allowed
to walk around the hut , it takes me precise 380 steps to walk around the hut. And
after one complete round I am again chained like a pet underfed dog. I have no
contact with the outside world

I am daily given a
mug of salted tea with some stale thick bread called samoon. It has deep pocket
marks and some mustard seeds spread over it, though it’s stale, but I pretend
that I am eating straight fresh from the oven. It’s an exercise for my gums to chew
the bread. The tea helps to wash it down. Tea is much stronger and thicker.
Lunch menu can vary with the mood of the Jailor. If all goes well till lunch we
may even get a good meal, but if any prisoner
creates any nuisance ,apart from getting beaten black and blue ,rest of
the camp has to be satisfied with left overs. This is a very effective way of checking
revolt. Keep them starved.

The man who runs the prisoner camp is a gulf war veteran. Everyone calls him the jailor.I came face to face with him only once and it was no pleasant experience. The mujahid who was given the duty of watching me had an eye
for my Nike trainers which I was wearing at the time of my kidnapping. And
finally one night he stole them, I didn’t even protest, but next day the Jailor
himself came with a poly bag containing my shoes. The poly bag was blood
stained. It is still lying untouched . I never saw the mujahid again around the
prison. Theft, I guess must be inviting a death penalty in “Caliphate”.

My next guard was
a dark brown guy. Short and gaunt with small hairs sprouting on his chin, which
he liked to play with, absent mindedly.

He was like me, bored
to death and would have liked nothing better than to have a conversation.

So finally, one evening
when he was watching me taking my evening walk around the hut, I decided to
break the ice.

“Where are you
from”, I asked.

“India; keep
walking and don’t look towards me, if anyone sees me talking to you that will be
the last moment of my life”, he replied without apparently moving his lips.

“Ok ok”, I
replied.

Caution is the
elder brother of tomfoolery in these times.

Finally when I was
back to the privacy of my hut, I had a conversation with him.

“So, what brought
you here to this hell hole of middle east”, my first journalistic question
since …umm very long.

“I am a Muslim
from India and it’s my duty to fight for my Muslim brethren anywhere in the
world”, pat came the answer.

He spoke English in a very funny fashion. The
answer was not a result of original thinking but some rote learning. He couldn't even face me while answering. Something in the sand caught his fantasy
and he remained silent
for the next 15 minutes. He began to mutter something to himself in some very
strange language. After a lot of head shaking and frothing at the corners of
his mouth, he looked up and stared at me blankly. His eyes had the “where the
fuck I am” expression and he knew that I had deciphered the same.

“Are you alright”, I asked slowly.

“Yes, I am fine.
You seem to be an educated guy. Can I ask
you something?”

“Yes, go ahead”, I
replied enthusiastically.

“Why are you here?
I mean you don’t seem like an American soldier or a spy. Your round thick
glasses remind me of my school principal.”
He laughed

“I am here because
I wrote an article which didn’t go well with the so called Caliph”.

“What did you
write to piss the Khalifa so much?” he smiled.

“The truth”

“What truth?”

“Something that
the Caliph does not want the world to know”

“Ok stop, before
you say another word, if the Khalifa wants it secret then so be it, no need for
me to hear it”.

He was pointing
towards something with his eye balls.

I didn’t get it,
but immediately 4 burly henchmen with covered faces and Kalashnikov’s appeared
out of now where, the guard was lifted by the gun totting guys from the
armpits. One of them carried a lawn chair and opened it in front of me.

Suddenly hush fell
around; everyone was straight up as if holding their breaths.

“Caliph has come, bow
your head in prostration”. A gunman pushed me with nozzle of the gun. I got up
on my knees and bowed.

He is not that
tall as Al-Jazeera wants us to believe, except for his thick forearms nothing
about him is like a mujahid; he looks any other Arab, thick jovial round face.
But his nose is sharp giving him a feature that is not common in this part of
the world. His shoulders are round from the hours of study he must have put to
get two PhDs. His one thesis was on the medieval Sufis of Middle East and the
other on the concept of the modern Caliphate. It had created a furore in the
academic circles of Iraq, but then his connections with the Al-Qaeda nulled any
official protests. Even American intelligence dismissed him as an intellectual
threat nothing more, to our own peril. Because he not only created the dream
but also made sure it is realized in this life time only.

He occupied the
chair which was by some standards not able to fit him completely. He pulled the
chair closer to me.

By a wave of hand
he ordered his men to unchain me and leave.

Now we were alone,
Caliph and the pet dog. I couldn’t resist a headline.

“How is Jailor treating you?” he asked looking directly into my eyes.

“Nothing to
complaint, but now that you are asking a chilly cheese burger would really
cheer up my day”, I replied. When your life depends on a whim of a maniac, fear
just vanishes from you.

He smiled.

”Has the jailor given you any paper to write? You journalists can’t sleep without slinging mud
on someone, isn't it?”

“Yes, that was
very thoughtful of you, But how did you came to know about the article I was
writing on your dubious ancestry”. I was really curious as it was still in the
drafts folder of my Mac book when ISIS picked me up.

“You had visited
too many people and places asking about me, I kept ignoring you as another nosy
journo, but when you started inquiring about my maternal family. Something had
to be done.”

I had managed to
uncover a secret that could shake both the Caliphate and Caliph to its foundation.
But instead of the Pulitzer, I was kidnapped.

The mighty Caliph stood up,
his back turned towards me.

“You do realize that
by a movement of my little finger I can get you beheaded and thrown in to the
desert.”

“Actually, I am
wondering what has taken you so long.”

He slashed across
my face, it stung and a white light flashed before my eyes.

“I am sorry”, the
normally placid and cool Khalifa had sweat on his forehead.

But this time I couldn’t smile, I tasted my
own blood.

“You are just like
Voldemort”, I blurted out, spitting out blood on the sand

“Then I recommend
that you read it. The villain of this series, Voldemort shares one very curious
characteristic with you.”

Both of them were
the flag bearers of a particular community, Magicians in Voldemort’s case and
Muslims in Baghdadi’s case. But there was a flaw in their family tree, ; they themselves were half-bloods.

For hardcore
extremist Muslims, almost every other religion is like muggles or the more
popular, KAFIR’s ,the non-believers, but the race they hate the most is Jews
and it was indeed a very skinny Jewish college student who had brought this
monster named Baghdadi in this world in
a dingy room of a nondescript
nursing home. His father, a middle aged handsome Arabic professor at the
university had no idea what bane his one night casual sex with an exchange
student had created.

One of the goals for ISIS is the extermination of Jews from Israel. If the
followers and so called “believers” came to know that their Caliph was himself
half -Jew. The caliphate would crumble like a house of cards.

For reading the
rest of the Journal, please log on to:- www.wikileaks.com/steve_Journal_al_baghdadi

2 comments:

Thnx anonymous. You know when I was a kid,there used to be a lot of poems in my prescribed text books of english that were signed off as anonymous , and I used to think what a genius this anonymous guy is. Till I got the meaning.